Amy. Then why can’t he stop at a tavern, and pay for his victuals?
Orphy. May be he don’t want to spend his money in that trifling way. Who knows, he may be saving it up to help an old mother, or to buy back land, or something of that sort? I’ll be bound he calculates upon eating nothing to-morrow but what he slipped off from our table.
Amy. All he took will not last him a day. It’s a pity of him, anyhow.
Orphy. I wish he had not been too bashful to ask for victuals to take with him.
Amy. And still he did not strike me at all as a bashful man.
Orphy. Suppose we were just in a private way to put some victuals into his cart for him, without letting him know anything about it! Let’s hide it among the tins, and how glad he’ll be when he finds it to-morrow!
Amy. So we will; that’s an excellent notion! I never pitied anybody so much since the day the beggars came, which was five years ago last harvest; for I have kept count ever since; and I remember it as well as if it was yesterday.
Orphy. We don’t know what a hard thing it is to want victuals, as the Irish schoolmaster used to tell us when he saw us emptying pans of milk into the pig-trough, and turning the cows into the orchard to eat the heaps of apples lying under the trees.
Amy. Yes, and it must be worse for an American to want victuals than for people from the old countries, who are used to it.
After they had finished their milking, and strained and put away their milk, the kind-hearted little girls proceeded to accomplish their benevolent purpose. They took from the large wire safe in the cellar a pie, half a loaf of bread, and a great piece of cheese, and putting them into a basket, they went to the barn-yard, intending to tell their mother as soon as the tinman was gone, and not for one moment doubting her approval—since in the house of an American farmer, victuals, as Orphy justly observed, are no object.